accident. The same infidelity to duty, which induced some of them to support their vices by traffic in their subjects, colored their career, and brought them in conflict with the laws of the eternal Providence.

The prince who, next to Joseph of Austria, governed at that time the largest number of men having the German for their mother tongue, was Frederic of Prussia, then the only king in Germany. He united in himself the six qualities of a great regent. Superior to personal and dynastic influences, he lived with and for the people. Free from prejudice, he saw things as they were. His prudence measured his strength correctly, and he never risked extreme danger but for a necessary object. He possessed the inventive faculty which creates resources; he had the strong will that executes with energy, swiftly, and at the right time; he had also the truest test of greatness, moderation.

The people bore him no grudge on account of the distribution of employments; for he never yielded the smallest fraction of political power to the class of nobles, was frugal in rewarding their service, and exacted of them the fulfilment of duty as unsparingly as he exacted it from himself. From an unhappy defect in his education, he never acquired a mastery of the German tongue, and he slighted German men of letters; but they magnanimously forgave his neglect, acted as his allies, and heralded his greatness.

Hardships had shattered his constitution. He was old and broken; had outlived friends, of whom the dearest had fallen near him in battle; had lost all enjoyment in music, in building, in the arts, but not the keen sense of duty. The thought of his campaigns gave him no pleasure, their marvellously triumphant result no pride: he remembered them with awe, and even with horror; like one who has sailed through a long, relentless whirlwind in mid-ocean, just escaping shipwreck. No one of the powers of Europe was heartily his ally. Russia will soon leave him for Austria. His great deeds become to him so many anxieties; he dreads the want of perpetuity to his system, which meets with persistent and deadly enmity. He seeks rest; and strong and unavoidable antagonisms allow his wasted strength no re

pose. He is childless and alone; his nephew, who will be his successor, neglects him, and follows other counsels; his own brother hopes and prays to Heaven that the king's days may not be prolonged. Worn by unparalleled labor and years, he strikes against obstacles on all sides in seeking to give a sure life to his kingdom; and his consummate prudence teaches him that he must still dare and suffer and go

He must maintain Protestant and intellectual liberty, and the liberty of Germany against Austria, which uses the imperial crown only for its advantage as a foreign power, and with relentless perseverance aims at the destruction of his realm.

The impartiality of Frederic extended to the forms of government. The most perfect he held to be that of a well-administered monarchy. "But then," he added, "kingdoms are subjected to the caprice of a single man whose successors will have no common character. A good-fornothing prince succeeds an ambitious one; then follows a devotee; then a warrior; then a scholar; then, it may be, a voluptuary; and the genius of the nation, diverted by the variety of objects, assumes no fixed character. publics fulfil more promptly the design of their institution, and hold out better; for good kings die, but wise laws are immortal. There is unity in the end which republics propose, and in the means which they employ; and they therefore almost never miss their aim." The republic which arose in America encountered no unfavorable prejudice in his mind.

But re

The relations of Frederic to England and to France. changed with the changing character of their governments. Towards the former, a Protestant power, he, as the head of the chief Protestant power on the continent, naturally leaned. Against France, whose dissolute king made himself the champion of superstition, he had fought for seven years; but with the France which protected the United States he had a common feeling. Liberal English statesmen commanded his good-will; but he detested the policy of Bute and of North: so that for him and the United States there were in England the same friends and the same enemies.

1774.

1775.

In November, 1774, he expressed the opinion that the British colonies would rather be buried under the ruins of their settlements than submit to the yoke of the mother country. Maltzan, his minister in London, yielded to surrounding influences, and in February, 1775, wishing to pave the way for an alliance between the two powers, wrote: "The smallest attention would flatter the ministry beyond all expression." "What motive have I," answered Frederic, "to flatter Lord North ? I see none the love I bear my people imposes on me no necessity to seek the alliance of England." He was astonished at the apathy and gloomy silence of the British nation on undertaking a war alike absurd and fraught with hazard. "The treatment of the colonies," he wrote in September, "appears to me to be the first step towards despotism. If in this the king should succeed, he will by and by attempt to impose his own will upon the mother country."

In October, 1775, the British minister at Berlin reported of the Prussian king: "His ill state of health threatens him with a speedy dissolution." It was while face to face with death that Frederic wrote of the August proclamation of George III.: "It seems to me very hard to proclaim as rebels free subjects who only defend their privileges against tbe despotism of a ministry." While still but half recovered from a long, painful, and complicated sickness, he explained the processes of his mind when others thought him dying: "The more I reflect on the measures of the British government, the more they appear to me arbitrary and despotic. The British constitution itself seems to authorize resistance. That the court has provoked its colonies to withstand its measures, nobody can doubt. It invents new taxes; it wishes by its own authority to impose them on its colonies in manifest breach of their privileges: the colonies do not refuse their former taxes, and demand only with regard to new ones to be placed on the same footing with England; but the government will not accord to them the right to tax themselves. This is, in short, the whole history of these disturbances.

"During my illness, in which I have passed many mo

ments doing nothing, these are the ideas that occupied my mind; and it seems to me that they could not escape any reasonable Englishman, who is naturally much more interested than I. Every thing which is taking place in America can be to me very indifferent in the main; and I have no cause to embarrass myself either about the form of government that will be established there, or the degree of influence of the party of Bute in the mother country. But every patriotic Englishman must deplore the turn which the affairs of his country are taking under the present administration, and the odious perspective which it opens before him.”

1775.

"The court carries its point against all principles of true patriotism, and treads under foot the rules of sound policy." “If I had a voice in the British cabinet, I should take advantage of the good disposition of the colonies to reconcile myself with them." "In order to interest the nation in this war, the British court will, it is true, offer conditions of reconciliation; but it will make them so burdensome that the colonies will never be able to accept them.”“The issue of this contest cannot fail to make an epoch in British annals."

"The great question is always whether the colonies will. not find means to separate entirely from the mother country and form a free republic. The examples of the Netherlands and of Switzerland make me at least presume that this is not impossible. It is very certain that nearly all Europe takes the part of the colonies and defends their cause, while that of the court finds neither favor nor aid. Persons who have lately been in England, and with whom I have spoken, make no secret with me that the higher classes of the nation are no longer so enthusiastic for their liberty. From all that I have learned, it appears that the ancient British spirit is almost totally eclipsed." When the ministry confessed its inability to reduce the colonies except by the subvention of foreign troops, he wrote: "The imprudence of Lord North shows itself in the clearest light; and surely he ought not to be at his ease, when he considers that it is he who has plunged his country into this abyss of embarrassment and difficulties."

No prince could be farther than Frederic from romantic attempts to rescue from oppression foreign colonies that were beyond his reach. In his cabinet papers for several years, relating to England, France, the Netherlands, Russia, and other powers, I have found no letter or part of a letter in which he allowed the interest of his kingdom to suffer from personal pique, or passion, or dynastic influences. His cares are for the country which he rather serves than rules. He sees and exactly measures its weakness as well as its strength; he cares for every one of its disconnected parts, and gathers them all under his wings. But he connects his policy with the movement of the world towards light and reason, the amelioration of domestic and international law.

When in May, 1776, the Prussian minister in Lon1776. don offered to submit a plan for a direct commerce

with America, so as to open a sale for Silesian cloths, and at the same time to procure American products at the cheapest rate, Frederic answered: "The plan appears to me very problematical. Without a fleet, how could I cause such a commerce to be respected?" "I shall never be able to form a navy strong enough to protect it."

In September he received from his minister in London a French version of the American declaration of independence. He had predicted that measure when first informed that the mother country sought the aid of foreign troops to reduce her colonies; and now, as the British had not had decisive success in arms, the declaration was to him a clear indication that the colonies could not be subjugated. He had heard of the death-bed remark of Hume, that the success of the court would bring to England the loss of her liberties. "If, under such circumstances," he continued, "the nation should suffer the faction of Bute and the tories to infringe with impunity the form of their government, they certainly merit no longer the name of free Britons."

With a commercial agent, sent in the following November by Silas Deane, he declined to treat; for he saw endless difficulties in the way of establishing a direct commerce between the United States and Prussia; but he consented to an exchange of commodities through the ports of Brittany.